Prior Release Frameworx 17.0
TM Forum Collaboration Projects Enable Digital Transformation with Platform Architecture, Monetization and Trust in the Internet of Everything, Open APIs, Smart City and Network Virtualization
Since February 2017, hundreds of individuals from a diverse range of member companies have worked together using TM Forum’s unique collaborative environment in 13 projects to deliver solutions to challenges facing businesses in the digital ecosystem. The results of their work are now available to TM Forum’s global membership, enabling all members to benefit from the new toolkits, best practices, maturity models, guides and technical reports within their businesses.
As a member, you can download and make use of all the important tools across a broad range of topics. TM Forum Frameworx continues to be the most widely used blueprint for effective and efficient business operations. We have outlined the highlights below so you can download and start using them today!
To access our full library of documents, visit the Resources Library section.
If you have any immediate questions, please email us at [email protected]
Release 17.0 Highlights
Agile Business & IT Program
TM Forum members working in the ZOOM project (Zero-touch Orchestration, Operations and Management) have released a complete blueprint for a platform for managing a multi-vendor Hybrid / NFV infrastructure as part of its Agile OSS toolkit.
This exciting new piece of work provides a guide to creating a management platform that meets the needs of today’s business dynamics. The blueprint brings together multiple elements into one set of tools in the TMF070 suite of blueprint documents. The suite includes key practical assets such as Open APIs, information models, best practices and deployment guides. Together these provide the standard interface required for multi-vendor hybrid deployments. It should be noted that even at the first release this blueprint goes beyond the very basic management capabilities typically deployed with NFV today, and includes items such as:
- Resource function activation and configuration
- Inventory Management
- Catalog Management
- Assurance
Together these key capabilities begin to unlock the latent potential of the new technology in a standardized interoperable way, and allows realization of the long-awaited business benefits.
The key implementation issues for virtualization management need user stories at the level of detail needed to drive the specification of APIs. These APIs realize the integration and interoperability of OSS solutions for the management of virtualization in a hybrid environment. The new TR229 ZOOM/NFV User Stories Suite contains elements for business and operational management audiences as well as for design and developer audiences.
At the same time, TM Forum’s core frameworks continue to evolve, bringing in the latest work from its member-driven collaboration programs and integrating it with the established Business Process Framework (eTOM), Information Framework (SID), and Application Framework (TAM) models and best practices to ensure they continue to remain at the forefront of digital business transformation. This includes a refresh of the established training courses to ensure they remain fully up-to-date with the latest uses of Frameworx for transformation to propel agile digital businesses.
Digital Maturity Model
Following extensive consultation with the world’s leading service providers, TM Forum identified the need for an industry-agreed Digital Maturity Model, metrics and methodology. To create that model, we’ve brought together expertise and models from leading service providers, consulting firms and solution providers in order to create a ‘living’ maturity model and set of metrics that help companies measure their true digital maturity. GB997 Digital Maturity Model is the Guidebook for the Digital Maturity Model and explains the business problem being addressed, the methodology used to arrive at a solution and the basic structure and algorithms used in the model. GB997A is an excel spreadsheet containing the actual model. Each dimension is a separate page with in the spreadsheet and sub-dimensions, criteria and characteristics are all contained within the different columns and rows. The model is also available as an iOS app – for more more information click here.
Open API Program
TM Forum’s Open API collaborative team has added 13 new Open API specifications to the portfolio of Open APIs and a new Open API Map. This brings the total number of available Open APIs to 44. The latest release includes:
- The first network management API, Resource Function Activation and Configuration Management API. This was developed closely with the ZOOM project team and is used for resource function provisioning and lifecycle management of resource functions (Network Service, Virtual Network Functions and Physical Network Functions). It replaces the previous beta version of the Entity Provisioning API.
- New APIs which will improve and ensure consistent management of the relationship with a customer across different channels. These are the Customer Management API, Account Management API (inc Billing Account Management), Payment Method API, PrePay Balance Management API, Loyalty Management API, Shopping Cart API and Promotion API.
- Enhancements and new APIs to improve management of B2B and B2B2C contexts operating with other service providers or third parties, including Party Role Management API, Partnership Type Management API, User Roles and Permissions API.
- New Entity Catalog Management API, enabling management of the entire lifecycle of catalog elements during several processes such as ordering, campaign management & sales management.
- Mapping and alignment from the Digital Services Reference Architecture (DSRA) to Open APIs enabling ease of development of platform-based boundaries leveraging TM Forum Open APIs.
The Internet of Everything (IoE) Program
The collaboration projects in TM Forum’s IoE Program are working on pragmatic solutions to the challenges relating to monetization, management and trust (MMT) in the context of creating and managing platforms and digital ecosystems for the Internet of Everything (IoE).
The first publication of the Digital Trust Challenges and Opportunities was developed based on workshops and interviews with TM Forum members and research from various industries, academia and government organizations. It outlines the key concepts of digital trust and identifies the top 7 digital trust challenges. This work will be a central pillar of TM Forum’s future work on coordinating all elements of digital trust.
The first publication of the Monetizing Internet of Everything (IoE) guide describes a standardized approach and a monetization template to help members when creating innovative products and defining new monetization models. It includes definitions of monetization models, how to build a monetization model using the template, an outline and examples of typical monetization patterns as well as the examination of key future trends in this area.
The widely successful TR211 Online B2B2X Partnering Step-by-Step Guide and TMF424 B2B2X Business Scenario Template are key tools for achieving agile, repeatable ecosystem partnerships. They have been extended with invaluable new templates for monetization models and a standardized use case template. Applying the best practices in these guides enhances the ability of producers and consumers in the platform economy to add value to their interactions.
The Revenue Assurance Solution Suite of documents (GB941) defines the KPIs that provide a common framework to measure three important aspects of revenue assurance: revenue leakage, revenue assurance related process efficiency and data quality. Release 17.0 includes additional Revenue leakage examples associated with Network Functions Virtualization (NFV).
At the Monetizing IoE InFocus event in Amsterdam, October 17-18, 2017, over two intensive and highly valuable days, expert speakers will address the challenges of IoE monetization, management and trust. They will look at how businesses can identify revenue-generating opportunities and execute on them. The event will also look at how to reduce risk and overcome barriers to successfully entering a complex digital ecosystem of partners.
Smart City Program
Cities are platforms that power the greatest marketplaces on earth, but cities don’t yet play instrumental roles in the emerging knowledge and data economy. Cities do, however, provide the required fabric for many businesses that couldn’t possibly survive without the concentration of people and assets that exist within the city. The new report, City as a Platform Case Study and Success Criteria, is a comprehensible architecture outlining key architectural components and building blocks in a smart city platform.
The City as a Platform and the Data Economy have the objective to guide cities on the process of data monetization using a platform approach. The new report, City as a Platform Architecture and Supporting Capabilities sets out to bring a set of capabilities and their architecture to make viable such data monetization. This report defines a conceptual platform architecture with the business logic to act as a data hub to be provided by a city.
The new report City as a Platform Business Models, provides a simple way of understanding the City-as-a-Platform ecosystem and a simple set of ideas to help a city determine what is needed to develop a sustainable and scalable city data exchange platform business. It has been developed with the help of a number of city platforms and of a core group of TM Forum members.
Customer Centricity & Analytics Program
The pressure on CIOs to leverage analytics for business innovation has never been higher. Service providers have been capturing vast quantities of transactional data from their traditional operational support systems (OSS). These systems have been made more robust and scalable through the application of TM Forum’s Information Framework (SID). Unique big data requirements and the need for rapid service provider business insight has driven the need for an enhanced big data dictionary. As service providers research and prioritize their analytics investments, the newly published TM Forum Big Data Analytics Solution Suite includes an update to the Big Data Analytics Big Data Repository (ABDR). TM Forum has conducted extensive research in the area of Big Data Analytics, and the updated document builds on that research by illustrating how the main challenges of big data analytics imply new approaches that are emerging as the maturity in this domain develops.
The Customer Experience Implementation Guide (GB962D) is a collection of use cases that represent business challenges and it provides an outline of possible solutions that involve the TM Forum best practices, recommendations and also models like the Business Process Framework (eTOM) and the Information Framework (SID). There are currently 54 use cases (49 CEM-Customer Experience Management and 5 CAM-Customer Analysis and Management) that have been published, including 3 new use cases in this release relating to IoE and monetization.
If you have any immediate questions, please email us at [email protected]